July 2
About 1:00 a.m. the Humvee and 2 ATVs pull into camp. I’m so excited about it that despite a whole bunch of noise I sleep right through it. You should know that my tent is anything but quiet. My CPAP makes noise; my invertor to run the CPAP off a car battery makes noise; the wind even when it’s hardly blowing makes a noise like gentle rain on the tent top. At first this was soothing after 7 days it’s just noise. The camp generators run until about 11:00 each night.
After breakfast we have a meeting and I meet the two new camp members. They didn’t even get off the plane on Sunday. Jody Shapiro is a documentary film maker who has received a grant to create a feature length film on the HMP projects. He will be in camp the next year maybe two collecting footage. Pascal thought he should start out by jumping in the deep end and covering the traverse. He took video of the trip. He left this afternoon to go to a film festival put on by Michael Moore. He is receiving an award for his latest work, “How to Make Your Own Country.” Parents should note that not all of his works are appropriate for kids so don’t send them off to Google this guy.
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| Jody and the robotic arm |
The other new camper is Rob Mueller from the Kennedy Space Center he is heading up the team of researchers who are creating the plans for what’s next in the US space program. How best we can use the Space Station, where should we be exploring…… He had proposed that for long term (several weeks) exploration of the moon (or Mars) it would be valuable to have manned rovers similar to the Humvees. This would reduce radiation for the Astronauts by reducing the amount of time they would be in “space suits”. They could travel and work in pressurized rovers. This was exactly what Pascal had theorized when he got the Humvees for Devon Island. Things are starting to fit together. Rob was a amazed by his experience and is trying today to start to organize and edit his data which includes a photo every 5 seconds during the entire trip. Hopefully I will have access to at least part of those photos which I will share with Everyone. By the way Rob is an Eagle Scout. So we connected. He says on his job when he is selecting a team the first thing he looks for is whether the person has listed scouting on their resume . This is a guy who’s hiring people who have doctorate degrees and his first thin to check is scouting. He’s particularly partial to Eagle Scouts of course.
On the food front the rover team where grateful for the soup but forgot to take the propane tank off the plane so that so was the last hot food they had for 3 days. I’m told they devoured the left over gnocchi when they got home.
This traverse was the final step in a long process of getting this Humvee to camp. Two years ago Pascal, John, Jesse and a couple other brave souls drove it over the Arctic sea ice to get it to the shores of Devon Island. Somewhere here is a magazine article about it I will try to remember to get it and send you all the details.
At the home camp we have a couple looming issues. It hasn’t started “really” raining and there is fear that without rain our water source will dry up before the end of the season. We are also facing a fuel shortage. The building of the military temporary base in Resolute has cause a shocking decrease in the gas and similar products available. Currently, ever gallon of gas that is brought to Devon Island costs approximately $25 due to increased costs, lack of availability and shipping.
The plane that picks up Jody brings us fuel and food. The order is of course not what I anticipated. 4 cases of mixed breads (wheat, rye, sourdough, rye) is 3 cases of hamburger buns and 1 case of wheat bread. 60 bagels is 12 bagels. I will just continue to make adjustments.
It’s 9:00 p.m. and it has started to rain and it’s a bit colder.
I stayed in camp all day today. Was planning on going out but I’m pretty tired. I realized it this was Girl Scout camp it would be time to go home. Been here 7 days just about 2 more weeks to go. It’s wonderful unbelievably beautiful and challenging but I miss home.
I'll leave you with todays Gross Moment
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| Mayo that has frozen and thawed over several seasons |
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